Everyone who supports authoritarianism thinks they’re going to be the exception. They can see other people who their politics denigrates as outsiders easily, but they could never be outsiders because they’re them and they buy into the bullying. They think signalling that they’re on board with mistreating other people will protect them from being mistreated, but all it does in reality is create a society where no one is safe.

Even the powerful people who buy into this thinking will find that it bites them in the ass eventually. They may be late on the list, but they’re still on the list. Eventually either the ever-shrinking circle of “insiders” will exclude them, or they’ll be in the last in-group once they’ve alienated the rest of society and put their own safety at risk. Every dictator is terrified of this, because they’ve seen how it plays out. They’re just gambling that it won’t happen to them, but eventually the mob will come. The best they can hope for is to delay it as long as possible.

But queer Republicans? Republicans of color? Disabled Republicans? Republican women even? They’re on the chopping block from the start and are only surrounding themselves with the people who want to diminish them while alienating anyone who might genuinely want to help.

All the more reason they can’t look directly at it. They think if they don’t make eye contact or try to fight back or run, the predator won’t come for them. They couldn’t be more wrong.

A fifteen year old version of myself somewhere inside just screamed in iptscrae induced frustration.

With the level of technical knowledge we’ve achieved, there’s no way we’re going back to doing things exactly the way they used to. One example that jumps out at me is the method this primitive technology guy on youtube uses to stoke his furnace. He’s basically made a little manual turbine out of leaves and vines to push his air rather than one of those little squeeze box things.

Obviously I’m not a blacksmith or historian so I don’t actually know how common something like that might have been, but I’m guessing it’s not super old. In any case, I’m sure there are other ways that we’d apply our more advanced knowledge to tackling the sorts of problems we’d be looking at with a collapse of manufacturing and shipping infrastructure.

Honestly, a technologically adept but non-industrial society of artisans sounds kind of cool.

Pretty sure this is super common on some equipment. The ellipticals at the gym I used (before it moved) had them , but I never bothered.

To be fair, I can close my eyes and just sort of flail on an elliptical in a way that would absolutely hurt me if I tried it on the ground. It’s also a lot lower impact and when I’m done I can just stop.